Post harvest update

Vintage was very short this year, with many varieties ripening at the same time. On average crops throughout the Barossa were less than previous years due to frost when the buds were first developing, a lack of spring and winter rains in 2018 and some hot spikes of temperatures in summer. However, that is the vagaries of agriculture, it doesn’t always work out the way you had planned! With a shorter vintage than other years, it’s a relatively quiet time in the vineyard this month, but it means we can get some other jobs done and Dan as been running out foliage wires on some of our new blocks of Shiraz, to support the vine canes as the vine grows during spring. This stops the vine canopy rolling on the main wire which can mean the grapes can become too exposed to hot sun in summer. Once we have had some rain (fingers crossed for that to happen soon!), deep ripping of the vineyard rows will commence and then in late May, early June pruning will begin. Then it will be all hands on deck for a couple of solid months with all of the vineyard hand-prunned.